INVITE feature is not working for me the last couple of days. Tried severals ways but it is not working. I usually invite daily or at lease every other day so I feel I am loosing opportunities to connect and that is how I became Mayor of Garland, Texas :-)
Russ Kenaston / Owner of Russ Electric LLC

We are definitely aware of the invite feature not working, and I filed a ticket for this with our engineering department on Monday. The engineers are working diligently to get this fixed, since it is vital to the MC eco-system. We are anticipating that it will be fixed today (Thursday) with our next code roll. Thanks again for bringing this to our attention.

We are definitely aware of the ability to delete messages being broken. I filed a ticket for this with our engineering department on Monday. The engineers are working diligently to get this fixed, since it is vital to the MC eco-system. We are anticipating that it will be fixed today (Thursday) with our next code roll. Thanks again for bringing this to our attention.

We are definitely aware of the invite feature not working, and I filed a ticket for this with our engineering department on Monday. The engineers are working diligently to get this fixed, since it is vital to the MC eco-system. We are anticipating that it will be fixed today (Thursday) with our next code roll. Thanks again for bringing this to our attention.

Our engineers have identified the fix to the dashboard bugs. They will roll out the new code after rigorous testing to ensure reliability. We anticipate it will all be resolved within 1-2 days, if not sooner.

Perfect solution and a win win for both the business owner and for Merchant circle.

1) When a business has the most connections in his district yes he deserves to be Mayor for that area. He gets a So called free ride (Ill get into to this...A free ride means simply: 1) A free large banner on his districts home page with his logo and phone number advertising that this company is indeed at this time the mayor for his area...this promotes interest for other companies to get invlolved or possibly try to overtake and become a mayor themselves (no one likes to be second or worse its human nature)). Free ride includes adverstising for that company back like before the changes in the Mayor program was initiated plus a large banner on that busineses district home page giving the that mayor a small advantage over all other businesses in his area for all his hard work making connections. Proven fact everyone wants free or low cost advertisment and people will go to great links to get it.

Ok enough for the free ride for the mayor part lets get into the cost advantages for Merchant Circle
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Lets give everyone an apprentice choice. The choice to pay to be up there with the Mayor lets say for a week or two or a full month only at a small price. This not only puts a price for the mayor spot (However the true Mayor gets it for free (Mayor connection advantage) but also gives busineses the thrive to get something for free that would otherwise cost an apprecnice mayor to get. Im guessing here a small fee lets say of $20.00 - $25.00 a month so other businesses will have the oppurtunity to see how it feels to be on top of his district homepage as well and if only temporarely they at least get that chance and good feeling. Limit the number of apprentice spots so that being on top doesnt lose its punch. (Maybe 2-4 apprentices spots per district x's the hundreds of districts that businesses are competing for Mayorship throughout the country within Merchant Circle.... NOW thats extra income your not receiving and are losing out on for sure!! ??) Also limit the number of times you can be an apprentice per year so that theres room for all businesses in that district to attempt to be an apprentice. This allows the big companies not to buy up all the apprentice spots to gain that extra advertisement advantage and leaves room for the small business with only say 20 connections to get that big spot next to the BIG Mayor on there districts homepage in there District.

Implement this or a similar program and you will see an excitement throughtout Merchant Circle you havnt seen since your grand opening. Make it fun make it different make it profitable, But dont make it dificult or boring likes this site is becoming theres no buzz of excitement or anticipation for your new program? Stray away from having everyone feel as though this site is becoming a "Just for Profit" type of advertisement website. Business owners have money theres no doubt but we are also smart and want to SEE where we are putting all our money, time, and efforts, rather than just READING in a forum that yea its working?? This doesnt fly and is quickly becoming M.C.'s future issues.

I dont see how that would do anything for you except throw 20 bucks their way. Cant see how that would benefit anyone except merchant circle. Your business has extra money to throw out I will sell you some links on our site. I will pay someone else that wants our advertising. Looks like MC could care less about your handful of complainers and wieners unless you are a premium member. Even then what do you really get. lol

I am so frustrated. None of my photos post on my blogs, I can't post any updates on the news page and I can't find a place on any of my networks pages to post ads like blogs and coupns like I used to. It makes no sense to pay MC when I can't advertise. I think MC should pay us back for the lack of service we've been receiving these past few months and beyond.

Tony, Then simply add to this thread with direction rather than sinical criticism. Im only hoping theres a way to change the direction M.C. is heading. This great idea was by far not a full thourough solution to the direct issues in regards to revamping this site.. Then again if M.C.'s changes have not effected your business in any way simply say nothing. GREAT.!! Your the 0.01% M.C. is refering too :)

Our engineers have identified the fix to the dashboard bugs. They will roll out the new code after rigorous testing to ensure reliability. We anticipate it will all be resolved within 1-2 days, possibly sooner.

And thank you all for the creative feedback, I will pass these thoughts along to our business development team.

Maybe you should call the GeekSquad based out of Best Buy. Considering all the damage your so called engineers have done for M.C. up too this point. Should we really expect anything different in two days??

We have already identified the programming solution - the reason we haven't rolled out the new code yet is because we are currently beta testing all of the bug solutions for the sake of being thorough and safe. Everything should be resolved within 1-2 business days.

Hmmm...you are definitely correct that the link should still be there. I tested it through my own account this morning and was unable to re-create the issue. The best solution would be to report the possible bug through the link provided above.

I'm happy to forward the issue to our engineering department myself - I will do so right now. I only suggested that you do it since I was unable to observe the issue myself and therefore will not be able to give them as much detail as you would.

JUST TO ADVISE YOU - THIS THREAD IS TITLED: BUGGY SITE PROBLEMS REPORT THEM HERE - THAT MEANS WHEN YOU POST ON THIS PAGE, YOU ARE REPORTING THEM TO MC ENGINEERING DEPT - THAT ALSO MEANS, YOU DO NOT HAVE TO REPORT THEM VIA SUPPORT TICKETS, ETC.

I can't archive my messages in inbox; I can't send invitations, I can't post a blog. I was informed MC was aware of this bug however, its been almost a week and nothing has been done. I can't add my additional cities so why am I paying for a service I cannot use. (2) Another problem if you update your name like I did from No Hassle Shopping 24/7 to No Hassle Shopping Inc. 24/7 it deletes your previous reviews and ratings; it deletes all of your badges. No Hassle Shopping had the following: Preferred Merchant, Top Merchant, and Circle of Excellence and verified by Merchant Circle. I no longer have all of the badges and I have requested on numerous occasions to have them replaced so far I'll received two I'm still waiting on the others. Will someone in top management please read this complaint and have No Hassle Shopping Inc. 24/7problems resolved. We as customers expect excellent customer service so far it has been less than perfect. (3) Why should we have to join another site to receive help? I joined Merchant Circle not to join additional sites to get help.

1) We have already identified the programming solution - the reason we haven't rolled out the new code yet is because we are currently beta testing all of the bug solutions for the sake of being thorough and safe. All the technical site issues you mentioned should be resolved within 1-2 business days.

2) Your listing correctly shows the Top Merchant and Circle of Excellence badges. The Preferred Merchant Badge only goes to listings that have one one of the bundles. The reason your Preferred badge went away is because you cancelled the bundle you previously had. To get that badge again you can sign up for a bundle through your dashboard by clicking on the "Promote Tab".

3) This forum is one method to get help, but we also have excellent customer service through our help center. If you click on "email us" we respond to those emails within 1-2 business days. Additionally, our help center has a a great library or helpful, short articles that can answer most merchant questions.

I have a bundle package I'm paying $59.99 per month. I was also verified through merchantcircle and that badge is gone also. However, I do thank you for your quick response. Does this mean that for all paying customers our due date for the packages we are paying for will be extended? Shirley

You got the Personal Invite Button working. Well that is part of it. Now when you go to invite Merchants, it goes to OOPS, Sorry something went wrong and go back to the Merchant Circle Home Page. Tried twice. Must say it is very frustrating considering you have been working on this issue. Probably very frustrating for you as well.

We pushed out the coding fix on last Friday so these buttons should be working just fine. I went in and just tested these buttons myself and everything appears to be functioning properly. Most site issues are actually browser issues and not bugs, and can be easily solved by clearing your browser.

Lance, I just tried publishing a newsletter from one of our accounts, and was able to without any issues. Can you post a screenshot of the error message you are seeing, so this will help us identify the problem you are experiencing? Also, what browser are you using?

Our dev team looked into this - apparently this is not actually a bug and the logic just needs to be improved. The code logic is set up so that in your neighbor dashboard you can only follow merchants in your zip code(and very close surrounding areas). So, it isn't a bug, it is just poor logic. You can still follow any merchant in any location when you follow from search results + listing pages, but from the dashboard you can only follow nearby merchants, which in your case you have already followed all available merchants from the dashboard.

We appreciate you bringing this issue to our attention, and we have plans to update this code logic in the future to improve user experience in the neighbor dashboard.

I am an employee for Sierra Insurance Associates, an insurance company.
1. I searched for our company by the company name, and our listing came up, which was good.
>http://www.merchantcircle.com/busines...
2. I searched for "insurance" in our area (Truckee, CA) and did not find our business listed in any of the pages. By page 4 (see link below) I saw listings for excavating sites, and still, no sign of our insurance company, which is very bad.
>http://www.merchantcircle.com/search?...
3. I have our listing under the "insurance" category. It really has no reasson NOT to show up. I'm not sure how Merchant Circle lists their businesses on the website, but it appears that this is either a simple error, or there is a huge flaw in the way the system is running.
4. When you search "insurance" in Truckee, CA, we should show up at least by the third page. We have an excellent web presence, and have been listed in the top 10 of many other search engines, so I would expect a similar experience here.

We are currently working on our internal site search. There are several issues with the functionality and the logic that deciphers the order a business is found in search. I just created a ticket with our engineering team to focus on improving the logic that is currently in place. I expect that this isn't an immediate fix, but needs to be & will be addressed soon. Thanks for reminding us of this issue, we want to improve everything for all local businesses.

Lisa, this is correct you can post a review on another merchant page, but you can't post a blog or sale on another merchants page. If you are connected to a merchant, a blog post, sale, deal, uploading of photos, etc.... all show up in their news feed & also help you get found easier in organic search results in the search engines. You can also send your network a newsletter to let them know what you sell. Hope you are having a great Monday.

There isn't a save button, however if you are creating a draft it auto saves it as an unpublished newsletter. Simply go to "manage newsletters" to make edits and schedule a release date. Here is a great article & video in our help center that can offer even more assistance with the newsletter feature:

Sorry your video is waste of time and to say this "Here is a great article & video in our help center that can offer even more assistance with the newsletter feature:" is a joke.

So you still did not explain why you don't have a save button.

Your auto save is worthless because it saves when it wants to instead of when I make a changes.

You can't even put text next to a picture in your "Article" section without something going wrong. If by luck you do get it to work don't even think about editing it because all your work will disappear then you start all over again.

Hi Brian,
It was either June or July of last year when I started having issues with the blog platform on Merchant Circle, I would try to add a picture and it would not show up in the blog is one of the issues and after reporting the problems over and over and being told that the issues with the blog platform were high priority item to be fixed, it is 1 year later and it still has not happened.

So I have since found a blog platform I pay $25/month to use. It allows me to insert photos, videos and audio if I want and I can insert links to my business sites or to other video sources if I want. I can use the blog as an additional income source (there is is a small additional admin fee for this) if I want to.

You can use this your main blog platform and direct your customers to it using a link. The blog I posted today is a spanish language version of yesterday's blog. Here is the link to the english version from yesterday: http://www.empowernetwork.com/randyt0...

Why PAY $25 for a blog when there are all those free ones out there? Because when you blog on the free systems you have no control over the advertising on the blog page and you are just driving business to those advertisers. Why not drive that to you?

Pictures, video, links, advertising and my content as I want it - it just might be the blog system for you.

This site has been getting 503 errors all day long today. You have a major issue here you need to address. This has been going on all day and you need to address it. THIS IS NOT A browser issue it is your system is reporting back 503 errors to visitors. This indicates you have a serer or system issue that needs to be addressed.

I would have expected this would have been addressed. When I do a google search on my page to find what google has listed on merchant circle the page keeps getting 503 errors. When I try and go to my dashboard today or even logon I get 503 errors. I have to try multiple times before it works.

Do you think people that find the link to my merchant circle page will try more than once when they get a 503 error. No they are gone so your affecting your merchants business and crediblity when you fail to resolve this issue.

This has been going on for at least 36 hours now. Not only are these issues damaging my reputation it is damaging to Merchant CIrcle as well. Your even losing more of your reputation with this than you probably even realize.

Patrick,
Thanks for your response but the fact that your response is 8 hours after I reported it bothers me. Sure it is fine 8 hours later but it was not fine for over an hour this morning at which time I gave up. This kind of issue and 503 errors happen far far to often with Merchant Circle and this mornings situation if you waited a minute than the rest of the page filled in. Do you really think people are going to wait a minute for the page to finish displaying.

But in a way this issue was a favor to us. Visitors had no option but to click our real website links to get more information. Thus by passing your ads.